Heheheh, yeah. I didn't like Bottom's over-acting at first, it actually made me cringe during the trailer. But what with him being the amateur thespian that he's supposed to be in the storyline, it would make sense that he'd be so ostentatious in his mode of speech.

Well I've only watched the first episode so far, and I'm quite interested, the question of quality was initially off putting but I got over it quickly after realizing it is essentially home made.I've noticed this eternal present theme, perhaps it is a symptom of the world wide culture finally embracing the internet and the potentially staggering amounts of information we now have access to. What do we do with it? What do we care about now? Isn’t someone going to tell us?Cultural teen angst and malaise?Oh dear

Oh, just noticed that Robin is the only one who explicitly knows where the surface is, that they all came down their voluntarily and what the wormy gas is for. He's probably the only one who hasn't been gassed out of the whole lot of them. Even O'Brien doesn't remember how to get to the surface and I'm pretty sure Dmitri's been gassed at least once, albeit not for a very long time.

Dimitri doesn't remember where the surface is or how to get there. So he's been gassed at least once. Robin seems to be serving as a sort of nagging cultural memory/relic, in addition to being a trickster. He knows what other people don't remember/don't want to know. I'm suspecting he might not be fully human- or not in the way we are.

So here's my question for this discussion:If you had to choose between living a short life, and remembering it, or living a succession of repeating lives, not remembering a thing-- which would you do?

Personally, I think I'd end up getting tired of both. So I'll just go with what I have.I used to say I'd only live until I was 50. Then I started getting into martial arts and realized just how much there is out there. Now I've decided I will have to live forever to learn them all.

Well I think Dmitri shows us what happens when you live too damn long. And Hella's true pain and anguish after finding Sam's been gassed and doesn't remember her at all is another strike against longevity. I mean, its like watching all your friends dying, and then having to watch it again and again. And the only alternative is to get gassed yourself and forget them from your end. Which I find equally horrific.

Also interesting, you'd have to redevelope the desire to gas yourself each time. So everyone would continuously loosing to their friends, because isn't is a 'bad' thing to get gassed?

Unless you could hypnotize or condition yourself in such a manner as which you habitually gassed yourself. People walking around popping ampules of the stuff every 15 minutes or so. It'd be like memento without the tattoos and Guy Pearce!

@WiseEyes Didn't it mention in the first episode that there are people who do that, deliberately nix themselves, like junkies?

An aspect I found intriguing was that at the end of humanity, in the Eternal Present, we devolve into acting out the same dramas again and again. It's as if with enough passage of time, all our stories become Shakespeare.

Yeah, I remember the junkies, but they never really say WHY they get addicted... Maybe it's the weird memory-erasing bit they play later in the series that gives them a rush? Maybe it's the social effects? A social drug? That's a weird concept...

As someone who just finished up a run of Midsummer nights dream last week, it was super bizarre to find this series through here.

Also thought that the characters closest to the originals

(O'Brien, Bottom, Robin, and Tania)

were the most difficult to engage in. Don't get me wrong, i loved their story and i get that they are all living the same mistakes over and over again, and that they were the nobility

(or aspiring to be, in Bottom's case)

but their words got too.... flowery for me at times.

Enjoyed the fact that Titania got to be her own girl at the end of the series though. Didn't have her walking off into the sunset with either fellow, that i saw and love the concept that an entire faction of humanity went "Eternal Life?! SWEET!!!" and hauled ass underground.

kind of a steam-punk eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, wasn't it?

I was on the crew for Wormtooth Nation. I'll see if I can drag Geoff and Cully over here to talk more about it.

2 things for now:

If you had to choose between living a short life, and remembering it, or living a succession of repeating lives, not remembering a thing-- which would you do?

This is, as I understand it, more or less the exact question the whole concept is built around.

I think Robin is very much your Right-Hand Man persona - no personal ambition to rise any higher than he is, and not telling anyone how to get to the surface because, well, no-one's actually asked him directly. He'd tell O'Brien if the question was clearly put to him, but otherwise things are pretty swell as they are.

and that's pretty much it, too. Robin is the ultimate of Living in the Now. I think he's quite surprised to find that no one else knows about the surface, or that no one else remembers why they're all there. For me, he's one of the most interesting characters in the whole thing. And I REALLY want to find out more about what he can really do, and how he got that way.

this is so off the philosophical meanderings that drive the whole thing...but productions like Wormtooth Nation must be applauded and supported, if for nothing else that they show for a small bit of cash you can do great things these days with the technology that is available (and of course the narrative and technical expertise).

by the last episode I was damn moved, they'd hooked me into the characters and I flet for them. fine piece of work.

The music and audio is damn high quality given the budget - the credits suggest that the bloke who played bottom did all the music as well.

My main comment - may we see more of this!

It reminds me of the mid 90s when I was designing webpages in html in a basic text editor...I so thought the web would continue to be this secretive place full of anarchy and new ideas and creations...and this type of production takes me back there...in so many ways I prefer it to Dr Horrible...simply because of the manner in which it was produced!

the credits suggest that the bloke who played bottom did all the music as well.

David J Murphy, yeah? I totally love the opening theme, can't stop singing the opening lines to myself. You just reminded me to go buy the soundtrack, and see if the dvd compilation is available for order yet...

If you had to choose between living a short life, and remembering it, or living a succession of repeating lives, not remembering a thing-- which would you do?

is basically the "eternal life; is it BS?" debate that i end up having with all my close friends at some point. I think that that's why this series strikes such a chord with so many. It calls to that taste of eternal loop that you get when you fall in love sometimes. That you've always done this, or that you Could always do this. Makes the ending of the series that much more satisfying. They did a great job of making the viewer feel they've completed the character's stories, without overtly resolving it.

For a shoe-string budgeted, college film it stands up pretty well. Although if the story hadn't been so engaging I would have quit watching within the first five minutes.

The funny thing about people mentioning the "eternal present" popping up in pop culture, is that it actually tends to do that pretty regularly. Think about the references made so far: 1984 - written in 1948, Dark City - created in 1999 (also, along with another version of the story, The Matrix), Eternal Sunshine was 2004, I believe. And in between there are things like a good bit of Philip K. Dick's work, which may not specifically be about a constant present, but certainly about a repetition of lives and an uncertainty of identity. Ah shit..my mind just blanked on the other examples I had...

Also like Dark City's recycling of people, and creating new identities for people was covered pretty well here. With the whole processing.

And fuck me, if I don't think that everything needs a musical number!! :p

I wouldn't mind seeing these guys given a larger budget to cover some similar themes.

I wouldn't mind seeing these guys given a larger budget to cover some similar themes.

I know what you mean...but there is soemthing else about the fact the budget is small and production values not what we have come to expect from corporate media that really appeals to me...I mean, the core is the story isn't it - if the narrative is shit, then no matter how damn fine it looks and sounds...it is just a waste of money...I just reckon this is what the interenet should be about - I imagined it more like this...rather than commercial netowkrs just making their standard TV shows available for download.

I've just finished and that was great. Inspirational. I want to see more from these guys and not only that i want to see more independent web based projects like this.

It has opened up a world of possibilities in my head that i didn't even see before. I have completely underused my internet access and must now go forth and write and make and just put myself on this world of information, leave something for the future to have.

On the eternal present talk. After experiencing something close to nixing (i got knocked out and lost pretty much most of my childhood) that caused short term memory loss also for a while and has pretty much left my memory with large holes in it and a problem retaining events that are happening now, i often wonder about my eternal present. My past is very often an afterthought to me, only remembered if reminded of it, such as the phone call from family every now and then. My future is something i don't consider at all really, limiting myself to vague plans that involve my next meal.

I live almost completely in the now.

It's something i'm wanting to change and given the choice of living eternally or living a finite life-span whilst retaining my memories, i'd have to choose keeping my memory. It's identity, without it your not quite you really.